NWG Innovation Festival 2022

NWG Innovation Festival 2022; an industry experience like no other! 

Over my near thirty years in the GIS industry, I’ve attended hundreds of events, and nothing quite prepared me for this year’s NWG Innovation Festival that took place, in person, at Newcastle Racecourse in July (not even the virtual Innovation Festival I attended last year, when I first started at 1Spatial!).

To say it is a unique event is an understatement. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, even compared to other large global events, which I’ve also had the pleasure of attending. Why is that?

It’s not a conference / seminar / event as you know them! 

There are tents everywhere! Everyone from water companies to suppliers, come together to collaborate and innovate on specific water industry problems. Where else would you spend three days talking shop to solve business problems in such a one-off environment? Don’t forget this is where NUAR originated from in 2017, and this year our sprint focussed on the challenges of Transferred Drains and Sewers, aptly named and branded as HMS Sewer (Hybrid Mapping of Sewers due to the Jubilee celebrations this year!)

Check out the sprint tent in this video!

Water and sewerage companies (WASCs) must maintain what are known as Transferred Drains and Sewer (TDS). Prior to 2011 these were private, but under a government act, were transferred to the ownership and responsibility of water companies. This has, in some cases, doubled the length of sewers to be maintained! 

Most companies have very poor records of the length, location, condition and serviceability of these pipes which typically connect properties to main sewers, which can often be the site of blockages!

Since 2011, 1Spatial have had successes in inferring the position of these sewers to provide planners and operational staff with better information for replacement and servicing. For  the festival, we worked together with the industry and other suppliers to investigate a new and innovative approach to map these sewers in an economically viable way in a reasonable timescale. We’re excited to see how this can be developed further over the coming months.

It’s a partnership 

For three months prior to the event, we worked collaboratively with Yorkshire, Southern and Northumbrian water to pull our three-day sprint together; with weekly calls at the start of the planning and a series of two-hour workshops at the end. It was brilliant to see, not only the differences, but also the similar problems each water company faces with this challenge and how this was replicated with the discussions in the tent. 

It’s thought provoking...

Where else do you get to listen to not only the CEO, CIO and Head of Innovation of Northumbrian Water on  a daily basis and have a coffee, or a beer, with them in passing. Not only that, Sara Davies (from the BBC’s Dragon’s Den) spoke to open the event and set the tone to “get out of your comfort zone”. It’s not every week that you work with seventy odd other people in a tent, facilitating supplier and customer presentations, different brainstorming activities and sewer Pictionary?!

Jay Blades spoke on the last day of the event, and if he isn’t an inspirational speaker than who is? Learning to read in lockdown at the age of 51, and his life experiences opened many of our eyes.

I also loved Nigel Watson’s book selection, I’ve since read “Factfullness” and have “Ministry of the Future” on my bedside table. And in our tent, we harnessed Margaret Mead’s quote that Nigel gave “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has!”

Its intense!

You’ve spent three months preparing for the 3-day sprint and while I love presenting and public speaking, it’s a completely different experience being in a tent in front of a diverse audience, from suppliers to water companies, and having a “disco ball” to speak into with silent disco headphones to listen to the proceedings.

Take a look at our sprint in action!

We had a packed timetable with positioning statements, lightning talks, supplier presentations and building the blocks of a business case and a technical solution. The blingo bingo in the Funderdome for the end of festival celebrations was a very welcome release.

It’s fun

Not only did we have Blingo Bingo, we brought games into the tent like build your own sewer network, sewer Pictionary, blindfolded sewer and Dobble (?!) as a break from all the innovating and collaborating that was going on. On site there was also a volleyball court, Lego building blocks, a chill out area, badminton etc. where you could have fun with your new colleagues.

The Funderdome was just that plus the Foxdog studios had us creating emojis to cook sausage and beans on a gas stove!

It’s got us great results!

WASCs have used various modelling approaches and we looked at how a hybrid approach, with other suppliers, can look at the data gaps that need to be filled. We saw various innovations, technologies and datasets that could be used to create a new hybrid mapping solution. The next steps are how we combine these to come up with a set of tools that can be used in different ways to map any region, geography, regardless of age of network, rural/urban and current state of mapping. An approach that any water company can adopt and adapt!

Check out the Challenge

Marketing asked me in our event wash up call should we explore next year's event? The answer was a resounding yes and it’s been the highlight of my working year so far (and probably will be to the end of the year too!).

A huge thank you to everyone at Northumbrian Water who organised the festival, to all that participated in our sprint and met us on our stand in the exhibition tent.

Take a look at our highlights video

Written by; Vickie White, Senior Account Manager - Utilities, 1Spatial